Platform agnostic – To be or not to be

Social media is a byproduct of the society. Users on social media are none other than humans that store within them, likes/dislikes. They own a choice.

These choices are also extended to social media platforms; each platform making itself valuable in some way or the other. Twitter – a great way to build connections, Facebook – a great way to stay in touch with friends, Youtube – a second choice to television, Instagram – a perfect way to share visual stories and Whatsapp – a interactive interaction app.

While someone may want to build connections, the other may want to view videos; possible that someone wants to do both. A marketer who wants to target, promotion of a product via a video would choose Youtube as a platform. Instagram videos cannot do justice to a television ad format.

Unfortunately brands post the same content across all platforms, which a click or miss attitude and expect the audience to engage with their content. Being platform agnostic might be helpful in certain instances though. Tripti Lochan, CEO, VML Qais says, “A brand’s overall objectives, content can and should be tailored to each platform. But, having said that there are forms of content, that work well across platforms. If a brand has a blog, on which they create long form content, they could share this across all of their other social platforms. Though, as an inroad brands do choose to do Facebook or Twitter posts that give users a sneak peek to this longer form content.”

A friend of mine who loathes Facebook and Twitter recently got on to Dubsmash and is heartily using the app. Without realizing that this has become a huge trend on social, he seems to have finally found a social app to his liking.

To track down such a user and market your product using Dubsmash will not be easy but rewarding.

Apart from custom audiences and hyper local targeting, brands need to discover and understand the various ways to understand their audience. Neuronme is a tool that analyses personalities of audiences on social media and segments them to create further successful targeting. The tool combines data intelligence in social networks with their algorithm.

Lochan claimed, “We feel that the overall content and social voice strategy needs to be channel agnostic. This should drive the content creation for all platforms, the form of which may change based on the demand of the platform and user behavior on the same.

As far as consumer behavior goes, Instragram is more suitable for user-generated content. But, again this content can also be shared across platforms or even streamed into a brand owned mobile app.”

It is no more about how many platforms the brand is on. It has more to do with what is being done on which platform.

Not being platform agnostic is a skill that marketers need to master. Building content keeping the platform framework in mind has to be the absolute essential step rather than choosing which platform to choose while marketing. It must be the other way round.